School Shootings and White Denial

[DeSwiss]

AlterNet
By Tim Wise
March 5, 2001

I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: white people need to pull our heads out of our collective ass.

Two more white children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another "nice" community is scratching its blonde head, utterly perplexed at how a school shooting the likes of the one yesterday in Santee, California could happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said in an interview with CNN: "We're a solid town, a good town, with good kids, a good church-going town…an All-American town." Yeah, well maybe that's the problem.

I said this after Columbine and no one listened so I'll say it again: white people live in an utter state of self-delusion. We think danger is black, brown and poor, and if we can just move far enough away from "those people" in the cities we'll be safe. If we can just find an "all-American" town, life will be better, because "things like this just don't happen here."

Well bullshit on that. In case you hadn't noticed, "here" is about the only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there is plenty of violence in urban communities and schools. But mass murder; wholesale slaughter; take-a-gun-and-see-how-many-you can-kill kinda craziness seems made for those safe places: the white suburbs or rural communities.

And yet once again, we hear the FBI insist there is no "profile" of a school shooter. Come again? White boy after white boy after white boy, with very few exceptions to that rule (and none in the mass shooting category), decides to use their classmates for target practice, and yet there is no profile? Imagine if all these killers had been black: would we still hesitate to put a racial face on the perpetrators? Doubtful.

MORE

- The only thing that's changed since this article was first printed with regard to America's penchant for the senseless killing of innocents, is the improved ability of Americans to avoid even recognizing, let alone doing anything about the causes of violence at its core. However, there is one thing we all need to understand, [font color=red]the lesson will be repeated until it is learned[/font].


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[lunasun]

1. how about it !! But many can not see it at all nor do they want to

also they have more access to expensive powerful guns for mass murder than those in poverty...think about it.

[SharonAnn]

5. Or, we could note that the killings are done by boys and young men.

So, what can we do about that?

[tblue]

2. Chris Rock did a good riff on this point.

I won't type it here because it's a tad offensive to some sensibilities. But if you want to watch it:

[treestar]

6. Very funny

and to the point

Though I'd like to see a poll of blacks on the post 911 attitudes - I had a feeling American blacks were perfectly welcome on that bandwagon as the US was "united" "Americans brought together" and the white racist was happy because he could hate Muslims/Arabs/foreigners "in peace" without the threat of being called out on it.

"hatriotism" - a great coining of a word. That's more what it was like.

[Diclotican]

8. tblue

tblue

It's sad when comedians have a better grasp on the reality of the issues - than the "journalists" of the day.... And Chris Rock was not holding back there - and he is true for the most part I'm afraid too

Diclotican

[exboyfil]

3. For high profile school shootings

Asians seem to be overrepresented. Of course they are clustered at post secondary (Goh, Cho, and Lu) representing far more than the 5% population in the US (but probably consistent with their population at post secondary instititutions). On a list with 19 rampage school killers starting with Bath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres), one individual was African American, one was native American, three were Asian American, and 14 were European American or possibly misidentified. I am not sure everyone is on the list because the 1959 school bombing in Houston was not included, and he was European American.

[enough]

4. k&r (nt)

[treestar]

7. True. Though the odds of being a victim are still very low.

The more day to day violence is probably worse - face it, we can live in denial that it will not happen "to me" and be right more or less.

And it has to do with poverty more than race, IMO, I would like to see the statistics for places where there are white people - which may be rural, but also more violent.